Patrick S

I'm sure that's true, and since I haven't tried it, I'm not in much of a position to knock it anyway.

Its amazing to me that anyone would want to eat a sugar-covered raw quail egg.

My bad, mamster, I should have read more carefully! Its a great recipe, by the way!

I actually did use that recipe for the gelee, but the coconut panna cotta recipe is from Neil "Nightscotsman" Robertson, and is in RecipeGullet. I much prefer coconut milk to dried coconut for flavor. Anyway, there is nothing to it Pontormo. If you can make Jello, you can make gelee. The only trick, if you want to call it that, is using the right amount of gelatin, that is the minimum amount you need.

I have several high power tungsten flood lights, and studio strobes as well. But 90% of the food photos I post, including the panna cottas, were taken under indirect "natural" light in the early evening. An example of a picture taken using the tungsten light would be the whole cake photo (not the slice or the bite) I posted in the exotic orange thread, the jaconda cake further back in this thread. The advantage of the tungsten light is that you can precisely control the direction and shape of the light source (using what are called barndoors). So for instance if you wanted to emphasize a texture, like the bavaroise on the exotic orange, you can set up the light so that it strikes the cake from above at a high angle. If you had the light in front of the cake, you'd have no shadows, and hence no texture would be visible. And then, say, you want to make the gelee glow, you can set up another light and close the barndoors so that you have a narrow beam of light that hits the gelee only, without overexposing/washing out the white elements. I'm rambling, but the point I'm making I guess is that lighting is everything, your subject can look many different ways depending on the lighting, and the more you pay attention to it, the better your photos will be.

It would be if the yolks were not well-mixed with all that milk and sugar. I've cooked many a custard and curd to 180 with no or almost not scramble. 180 is basically the highest of what you would cook an anglaise too, and if you go much past that you will definitely start to scramble the eggs, but 180 itself is not too hot. Of course, you should be stirring constantly as the anglaise heats up, so that the anglaise on the bottom of the pan doesn't curdle before the anglaise on the top even thickens, and if it starts to break, pull it from the heat quickly and keep stirring. As far as how to keep from boiling -- you won't reach a boil until you get to ~212. As you approach your target temperature, you can reduce the heat (keep whisking though) so that the temperature of the anglaise is rising slowly, which will make it easy to get where you want to be without going over.

The flavor is pretty light even with the vanilla beans, and not very sweet either (only 60g of caramelized sugar to 480g of cream and yolks). My personal preference would be for it to be a bit sweeter, but that is true with a lot of recipes. The flavor of the bavaroise is also light, and I am definitely going to reduce the amount of whipped cream in it if I make it again. The orange anglaise base actually tasted fantastic, it just got a little too diluted in all that whipped cream, IMHO.

A simple and refreshing dessert: coconut panna cotta with pineapple gelee.

You don't need to convert anything. I used powdered gelatin in the amounts specified in the recipe, bloomed in water and melted in the microwave, and nothing turned out under- or overfirm.

Not that this bit of trivia will do you any good, but virtally anything made from fruit will have trace amounts of alcohol in it, as does virtually anything that includes vanilla extract as an ingredient, though the prevailing definition of non-alcoholic beverage is IIRC anything that contains less than 0.5% alcohol.

alanamona, I hope you don't mind me replying to your question on this thread instead of the exotic orange cake thread. The lemon sponge recipe was from Rosie's All-Butter Baking book (the title is something like that). If you want the recipe, let me know. It was rolled in a sugared towel while still warm. I bunched up a little of the towel in the middle (at the end of the sponge where you start to roll), so the turning radius wouldn't be so small, and the cake would be less likely to crack. Also, as you can see in the picture, I didn't fill the roll the way you would normally.

Proportionally, the gelee layer is quite thick. Its slightly thicker than it should be, because the gelee was molded in an 8" pan rather than a 8 3/4" mold, as the recipe called for. It didn't overwhelm the other layers, but I personally I think it would be best if all the layers were about equal thickness. This was my first time using this recipe, and I'll probably reduce the size of the gelee layers next time around. ← Patrick, what is that dark ring around your cake in the photo, or is that a metal ring that you use for assembly? ← The cake is sitting on the base of a 9" springform pan, which the cake was assembled in, and the cake+springform base are sitting on a glass cake stand.

Proportionally, the gelee layer is quite thick. Its slightly thicker than it should be, because the gelee was molded in an 8" pan rather than a 8 3/4" mold, as the recipe called for. It didn't overwhelm the other layers, but I personally I think it would be best if all the layers were about equal thickness. This was my first time using this recipe, and I'll probably reduce the size of the gelee layers next time around.

Its Island Oasis brand. BTW, mix IO brand Passionfruit (or mango, or pineapple, or a mixture) with vanilla vodka, and use a dropper or syringe to put a tablespoon or so of Chambord on the bottom of the glass (looks like a cherry on the bottom), and you have a killer cocktail.

You might want to check large liquor stores. I buy a frozen fruit mix (Passion Fruit, Mango, many other flavors) that is made of puree, sugar and citric acid. I can't remember the brand name, but I think it is "____ Island" or something like that. If the recipe calls for sugar to be mixed with puree, you can use this stuff, and adjust the sugar accordingly.

I finally got around to making this last week. The only thing I think I would change next time would be to reduce the amount of whipped cream in the bavaroise, so that the orange flavor is not diluted as much.

Lord, that's beautiful. How did you get such a clean cut, Patrick? There are no mousse smears on your almond cake! ← Nothing special-- just use a clean, sharp, thin knife to make each cut. It helps if the cake is very cold or even frozen, but that's not necessary. I'm pretty sure the slice in the picture was cut while at refrigerator temp, not frozen. The fact that the cremeux and bavaroise are stabilized with gelatin also helps keep the cut clean. Thanks Ruth, and everyone else, for complimenting my cake! gfron, that Delicia al Limon looks delicious and interesting.

I agree with Pam. I haven't frozen plain whipped cream, but I have frozen plenty of mousses and bavarian cremes in which whipped cream is a major ingredient, with no obvious problems.

Yes.

On a similar note, RLB has a recipe for orange curd that calls for reducing 1C of fresh juice to 2T in the microwave. This gives a thick, intensely orange-flavored liquid. I haven't read this whole thread, so I apologize if this has been suggested already.

I've been eating pieces of Exotic Orange Cake. The layers, from bottom to top, are: honey almond cake, caramel vanilla bean cremeux, honey almond cake, orange bavaroise, Passion Fruit/Mango gelee. The cake is coated with more orange bavaroise.

Pierre Herme's Lemon Cream. Line the cake pans with plastic wrap, freeze the cream in the pan, then lay it right into the cake as you construct it. ← I've done that before, e.g. in Herme's Riviera, but never in a 12" cake that will likely be out of refrigeration for several hours before serving. I'm afraid that it would not stand up well. ← why do you think lemon curd would stand up any better? ← I don't, at least not a typical lemon curd, which is why I asked for a recipe "that sets a little firmer than a typical curd." What I just did, and tomorrow I'll see how it turns out, is make something similar to Herme's lemon cream, just with a higher proportion of eggs and a lower proportion of butter. I ended up using 12 yolks + 2 whole eggs to 1C juice, 3T zest, 300g sugar, 240g butter mixed in at the end.

Pierre Herme's Lemon Cream. Line the cake pans with plastic wrap, freeze the cream in the pan, then lay it right into the cake as you construct it. ← I've done that before, e.g. in Herme's Riviera, but never in a 12" cake that will likely be out of refrigeration for several hours before serving. I'm afraid that it would not stand up well.

The ratio would be precisely 1:1, i.e. an equimolar mixture of fructose and glucose. Something I was wondering about last time this came up is whether you can buy high-fructose corn syrup in retail quantities, because it is 1) dirt cheap due to gov't corn subsidies, and 2) is essentially the exact same thing as invert sugar, the only major difference being that HFCS is not exactly 50/50 glucose/fructose -- HFCS 55 is 55% fructose and 45% glucose, and HFCS 42 is . . . you get the idea. They are basically the same thing, just made in different ways. Invert sugar is made by hydrolyzing sucrose into fructose/glucose, whereas HFCS is made by partially converting a glucose syrup to fructose. ← Patrick, any idea what the stuff sold in grocery stores is? MelissaH ← My understanding had been that the sugar fraction of regular light corn syrup is almost exclusively glucose. However, if you read the ingredient list of some corn syrup bottles, like Karo, you'll see that they list corn syrup and high fructose corn syrup as ingredients. My best guess is that brands that don't list HFCS as an ingredient are essentially glucose syrup, but for those that list HFCS as an ingredient, I don't think there is any easy way to tell what the proportion of glucose to fructose is. ← Corn syrup is never 100% glucose. According to this page, corn syrup is always comprised of glucose, maltose, maltotriose and higher saccharides. ← Thanks for the clarification, Scott. I wonder if maltose and maltotriose, since they are essentially very small glucose polymers (di-glucose and tri-glucose, respectively), if they would possess any of the confectionary qualities of glucose? I mean, obviously very large glucose polymers (starch) don't have the right qualities, but I wonder if when you get down into the di and trisaccharides if they have the right properties.

The ratio would be precisely 1:1, i.e. an equimolar mixture of fructose and glucose. Something I was wondering about last time this came up is whether you can buy high-fructose corn syrup in retail quantities, because it is 1) dirt cheap due to gov't corn subsidies, and 2) is essentially the exact same thing as invert sugar, the only major difference being that HFCS is not exactly 50/50 glucose/fructose -- HFCS 55 is 55% fructose and 45% glucose, and HFCS 42 is . . . you get the idea. They are basically the same thing, just made in different ways. Invert sugar is made by hydrolyzing sucrose into fructose/glucose, whereas HFCS is made by partially converting a glucose syrup to fructose. ← Patrick, any idea what the stuff sold in grocery stores is? MelissaH ← My understanding had been that the sugar fraction of regular light corn syrup is almost exclusively glucose. However, if you read the ingredient list of some corn syrup bottles, like Karo, you'll see that they list corn syrup and high fructose corn syrup as ingredients. My best guess is that brands that don't list HFCS as an ingredient are essentially glucose syrup, but for those that list HFCS as an ingredient, I don't think there is any easy way to tell what the proportion of glucose to fructose is.